


Detective Crocker and the Midnight Crew

by imlovedavepeta



Series: Detective Crocker [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, we'll see where this goes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-01-25 08:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21353137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imlovedavepeta/pseuds/imlovedavepeta
Summary: Jane Crocker, a sharp young woman living in the suburbs of Prospit County. She's a hard worker and she can almost never be evaded on the job. But a certain gang is testing her wit and ingenuity! Can she possibly take down the ever elusive Midnight Crew?
Relationships: Jane Crocker & Dirk Strider, Jane Crocker & Jake English, Jane Crocker & Jake English & Roxy Lalonde & Dirk Strider, Jane Crocker & Roxy Lalonde
Series: Detective Crocker [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1539385
Comments: 8
Kudos: 12





	1. Good Morning Jane

The carnival is filled with blank, unfamiliar faces. You walk, through the sickly green tents and their blood red stripes. The sky a candy plum. The ground a grave-like grey. You don’t really know what’s happening, or where you really are. You feel hazy, you don’t care. Everything’s waxy like an oil painting. But what you do care about is that awful ringing noise. It screeches and echoes throughout the park. No one seems to notice. Where is it coming from? The popcorn machine? Full of teeth? That emerald man in the booth. His eyes burn. The world seems to swirl and spot with black and-

You realize your eyes are closed. 

Heavy lids peel to a dark room. It takes a few blinks from that whimsical park to really comprehend where you really are. It’s morning.

Five in the morning to be exact and you’ve found the source of the ringing. It’s your phone, someone’s calling you. Sluggishly, to pat around for the pesky device. The cold glass meets your hand as you finally find it. You grasp it and bring it closer to your ear. It’s your boss. You tap the lime pick up button to answer.

“Detective Crocker, I need you in at nine, can you do it?” The urgency temporarily cuts through your inertia. 

“Of course, I’ll be there.”

“Good.” He hangs up.

A moment is spared to stare at the ceiling. It’s hazy and blurry, along with the rest of the room. Heavy shadows of black cover the various furniture lining the walls. You reach to your side and grope around for your glasses. The round, freezing rims settle themselves on your round nose. They don’t do a thing for your pitch black room. 

Although the covers were disturbed in your search, they still hold a comforting warmth that beckons sleep. You nearly slip into the unconscious. But that can’t happen, not this morning.

It’s a gargantuan effort, your joints pop and crackle in protest. A big stretch and a crack of the neck chases away the rusty joint feeling clinging to your bones. You pull your lovely, friend-made quilt off your legs and swing them off the bed. The cold wooden floor meets your feet and a shiver runs through your body, leaving prickles of goosebumps behind. You pad through the room carefully as to not trip, you really can’t see a thing. Waving your arms around in front of you, you find your dresser and pull out some clothes for the day. After finding a suitable outfit, you mosey your way to the bathroom. 

As you creep through the halls, you wonder if perhaps you should decorate your home. You haven’t lived here long, six months or so, and you’ve furnished the rooms and acquired the necessities. But this place feels… empty. The silence so absolute that you fear to break it. A few posters and doo dads would liven it up more, that’s what you think.

The bathroom isn’t any lighter than your bedroom, you squeeze your eyes shut and flick on the light. Your eyes adjust and blink to your plain bathroom. A simple vanity, toilet, and most importantly your shower-tub hybrid thingy. The cornflower tiles are even colder than the rest of the houses wooden floors. You need to invest in some carpets. Carpets that add beauty to your humble suburban home. Or maybe silly ones to make you feel giggly for the day? Hmm...

Quickly stepping over the freezing blue ground, you hop into the shower. All this cold can be handled by a boiling hot shower. As the hot water pours over your head of dark curls, your mind wanders. For breakfast you should make eggs and pancakes, bacon too. Should you drink an energy drink? No, you’re not very tired anymore, you think as you wipe a hand over your face. Cold floors do that and the morning chill make you feel sharp. You’ll have coffee. Oh, you should call Dirk, he must be awake. That man never sleeps, no matter how many times you tell him to.

Absentmindedly, you wash your licorice hair with shampoo and scrub your body with soap. The warmth of the shower pours down your shoulders and back soothingly. 

Shutting off the water, you towel off and change into your daywear. Today’s outfit is a crisp white button up with cool gray dress pants. To give it some pop, you’ve decided on a tie bright, cutting red.

You step from the humid bathroom and into the icy hallway, your frozen feet hurry back to your room for socks and shoes. Once your laces are tied, you’ll make breakfast. If you still have the time of course.

You fish under the desk and pull out a shoe box. You rummage through the white tissue paper and the scent of that lovely fresh shoe smell wafts into your nose. The slick black shoes are new, and you love them to bits. As a young girl, you had worn all sorts of semi formal skirts and dresses. Not to mention heels, what a nightmare, looking good isn’t worth the broken ankles. These shoes though, they make you feel strong. The stability while still making those powerful clicks, as if you are something to pay attention to.

Shoes tied, you pick up your phone and take a quick peek at the time. It’s a little past six, and Dirk is online just as you thought. It’d be nice to chat while cooking up breakfast.

Two rings and he’s picked up.

“You should be asleep!” You remind him with faux disappointment and a theatrical sigh.

“And leave you with no conversational partner at six in the morning? No chance.” You hear him tinkering with some project. “Besides, different time zones?”

“Oh come on, this can’t possibly be healthy! Have you even slept at all?”

“Now that’s confidential information that I can’t divulge, Jane.” You roll your eyes, such a drama queen!

“Very well, are you perhaps able to divulge whether or not you’ve eaten in the last five hours?” You ask as your shoes click against the kitchen tile. He pauses.

“That’s also confidential.”

“You need to eat! If you aren’t going to sleep, you might as well do one thing to keep up your energy.”

“I’m fine.”

“Eat.”

You both bicker over his poor habits as you keep up your good ones. To push him, and maybe make him jealous, you decide to have a cup of orange juice instead of coffee. 

You munch on your hearty breakfast and side eye the time. It’s a little before eight and it’s about time you head to work. The drive between you and your workplace is fairly short and takes at most about thirty minutes to traverse.

You bid your dear friend adieu and wash your dishes before opening the cream door to blue dawn.


	2. Car rides and I'm having way too much fun with imagery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing like a cool ass car drive and references to other works amiright?

The suburbs are still as can be, this time of day. Everyone silent as to not wake up their neighbors, everyone waiting for the sun to come up to spring out of bed. Or they just aren’t awake yet. 

It’s a lonely feeling, not even the wind stirs to greet you at the open door. You shut it softly behind you and the cement walkway scrapes against the bottoms of your shoes as you make your way to the street, where your humble little car awaits. Your car is a quaint thing painted white with gray innards.

The door pops open and you situate yourself in the driver's seat, clicking the seat belt secure and turning the key in the ignition. It rumbles to life beneath you and the lights flick on. 

You pull away from the curb and make your way out of the winding suburban streets. Each house a bone white with gray trimmings, a requirement for every home. The county is nutty over every home looking the same. The only room for creativity is the front yard and the front door, even the doors have to be either beige, brown, blue, or some monochrome color. It’s a little silly in your opinion.

Eventually you emerge from the maze of same houses and onto the freeway. The roads are busier, but not by much. Your fellow drivers are either commercial trucks, tourists from other kingdoms, or trolls heading home from their nocturnal nights. 

You leave the common roads onto more scenic highways. Human Kingdom covers a mass of fertile land, and so on your shortcut you pass a lot of farmland. The clear fields are misty in the morning, leaving quite the sight as the molten, marmalade sun peaks shyly over the navy blue mountains. There’s not a single cloud in the sky, and to have a little fun, you roll the windows down to let the wind play with your hair.

Then you pass through a road cut into a mountain and see the imposing skyscrapers, scraping the sky as they usually do. The city can feel intimidating, what with the fact that there are hundreds upon possibly thousands living here. 

When you first came here, the roads were so very perplexing. Bridges and roads wind above and below in a mind boggling knot of directions. Even today, you still try to keep to your specific route as to not be lost.

You pull into the parking lot and huff. Someone stole your parking spot. Again. Darn you whoever you are! You just pull into the one beside it and restrain yourself from keying the car in a fit of petty dismay. Unfortunately, you are a law abiding citizen.

The police station is a gaudy gray brick building with a vendetta against colors besides blue. There are uniformly cut square bushes lining the sides and black outlined glass doors, which you enter. 

Now, while a tiny improvement, the guts of the building aren’t much better. Pasty white walls, oak wood furnishings, and navy blue carpeting. Dotted here and there are some fake potted plants and plastic, solar powered jiggly-ma-bobbers. What do you call those anyhow? You’ll look it up later.

At the front desk sits a snoozing secretary. She’s a hard worker with insomnia, so you truly don’t wish to wake her. You sign yourself in, careful not to make so much as a peep. You could leave it at that, but it feels wrong to leave her to wake cold with a crick in her neck. You spy her coat crumbled on the ground. It could make either a decent pillow, or blanket. Pillow is the function you decide on as you believe she’ll like a not sore neck more than warmth. Besides, it’s not that chilly.

You fold her stiff lime coat and with the delicacy of an eggshell, you place it under her horned head. You wait to see if she stirs and when she doesn’t you quickly stride down the hall to your office. 

The inside of your office is bare boned at best. You haven’t actually been a sleuth for that long. All there is in here is a near empty desk save for some documents and paperwork you’ve filled in and a few Problem Sleuth poster lightening the walls.

Problem Sleuth has been one of your favorite franchises throughout your childhood. It’s one of the things that inspired this dream job in the first place. Who doesn’t love justice? You still love the series to this day, even if it may not be totally accurate about actual detective work.

But if the author is being completely honest, he knows jack dick about this baloney and is making up every word of this bullshit.

You sigh as you settle in your crappy office chair and gaze at the backwards words on the door with a frown. You don’t need to see them from the right perspective to know that your name is still spelled wrong. 

Instead of the accurate title of J. Crocker, it’s J. Crockett. You see the reference and it is not appreciated. While you may be a seasoned prankster, you would prefer them kept out of your professional endeavors. They still haven’t fixed it either.

You’ll complain later. You glance at the silly cat clock that Roxy had gotten you as a “job-warmin pressie!!” and see that it’s about time you see your boss.

You go to open the door, but it’s swing is almost instantly jammed by something in front of it. What the fuck.

On your tippiest of toes, you peer through the window with your misspelled name. To your utter confusion, there’s a giant box sitting it’s box buns smack dab in front of your goddamn door.

Motherfucker.


	3. Office Shenanigians

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane hops out a window.

This is. Fucking ridiculous. 

You bang your head against the door a few times. Hand on the handle, you jiggle the knob hopelessly. Literally, WHAT THE FUCK.

You are an ADULT WOMAN. Who PREFERS not to curse. But FUCK.

You rest your head against the door and curse under your breath. You slump your whole body against the door and slide down like a syrupy pancake slapped into a wall. Cheek and ear squished into the door, you listen for anyone who could be scampering down the halls.

…

Nobody.

Slumping the rest of the way down, you groan dramatically at the ceiling. This may be a little overdramatic, but in the privacy of your prisoning office YOU THINK IT’S JUSTIFIABLE. You stay on the floor for a few moments, just because you want to. But you have somewhere to be.

Like scooping a pancake off it’s pan, you sit up from the probably dirty carpet. Hmm, two pancake metaphors. Almost in a row. You should step your game up, or Strider’s gonna snark at you for it. 

You heft yourself onto your feet and fret over the slight grim clinging to your white shirt. Oh, the price you must pay to be a drama queen.   
You have to get out of here. You have somewhere to be and that somewhere is your Boss’ office. You’re a detective, you can figure this out.

Standing in the middle of the room, you look around to search for any possible escape routes. The door is blocked, and there isn’t any other doors to escape through. There is one vent, but it’s much too small for a grown woman. And then there’s a window. 

You meander to the brown, beer bottle tinted window. You click open the lock and jab your fingers under the slim opening and heft up the heavy glass.

You peer out of the newly opened window. Thank god you’re on the first floor, you can climb out! 

It’s a little brighter now, the sun framed by towering apartments. The thousands of windows glitter like a sea of glass. You wonder what Dirk is up to, he said he lived in an apartment complex. 

God, you hope you’re not late to meeting your boss.

You haul your top half over the window sill, swing a leg over and lean out. Aw jeez! The windows a little higher up than you thought!

But it’s too late to catch yourself. Gravity and momentum pull you out of the window and you topple into the bushes. Twigs and tiny branches poke at you painfully and you leap up with a yelp of pain.

The bushes’ little burrs hook and catch onto your dusty white top. You swear colorfully under your breath and spent a minute or two untangling your shirt from the wretched little things. 

Your back and arms sting from the fall and scratches the bushes inflicted on you. You’re probably going to bruise. 

Instead of wallowing in the pain, you stand up straight and take a breath. The pain dulls and you open your eyes. You are fine. 

You walk back around to the front doors. As you enter, the secretary perks up a bit at the sight of you. She rubs at her eyes and yawns, giving a weak wave and a small smile. She must have just woken up.

You return the smile and mutter a hello. But you can’t stop and chat, you have a meeting with the boss.

The stupid box is still in front of your door. You stop before it and stare at it with dismay. What’s even in there that’s so heavy? You are a very strong woman, how could you not move it??

In a short fit you make an attempt to move the box. It’s VERY heavy and you nearly drop it. Bu you quickly catch yourself and lift the box and scooch it to the side of your door. 

That’s better! You think as you take a moment to catch your breath. You take a moment to catch your breath…

…

Moment over! You’re fine now.  
You continue down the hallway. There, at the very end, sits a standard door with the initials K. M. stands. Now, at first glance there’s nothing outwardly wrong about this door. But unless you’re a real fresh rookie, you know the man behind that door.

The man behind that door is a troll man with gargantuan horn reaching to the sky, curvy like swaying seaweed in the water. He has an enormous bramble of pitch black curls and he stands to a height of maybe 6’7. He also has an affinity for sad clowns and clown makeup. It’s a staple of some religion he takes part in, so you don’t ask.

You’ve only met him once and he seemed nice enough. Mr Makara had a smooth voice and somehow projected a proper and professional air about him, a difficult feat with clown makeup on. 

But even so, there’s this feeling you get when he’s around. Like something bad will happen. And the rumors about him worshiping some death god or whatever doesn’t help. You think it’s all silly, really, but you just can’t shake that awful spine crawling feeling that disaster’s at your door.

You stand before his door and compose yourself with a deep breath. Alright Jane, you’ve got this. It’ll be fine, he just needs to speak with you a moment and then you’ll be on your merry way to your office to get through a mountain of dull busywork.

You let out your breath and poise your fist for a knock. You’ll be fine. You give a few firm, but gentle, knocks on the cheap door. A smooth voice speaks from inside.

“Come in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna try to update at least once a month for y'all, but I'm inconsistent on good days so. No promises.


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